I’d like to talk about a topic that most people avoid. It’s a taboo topic because most business owners are typically positive, upbeat individuals who tend to avoid the negative. Heaven forbid that any pessimism ever shadow the company! But… is it pessimism to admit one’s weaknesses? Absolutely not! So long as once the weaknesses are identified, the beholder of said information approaches these weaknesses with positivity and puts into place a plan to eliminate them.

So then, when talking about websites, how do we find our weaknesses and more importantly what do we do to fix them?

Over the past several months my company has been inundated with a higher than average amount of request for proposals. While we’re used to being solicited for several proposals every day, the last few months we’ve witnessed more than triple!

Every week we take the time to determine which ones we will bid on by using our typical approach. At the beginning of each day we sit down and prioritize, consider the types of projects along with the quality and detail within each. Finally, we assess the feasibility of any budgets identified.

I’ve noticed a trend that is evidently growing. A whole lot of request for proposals start out with wording that reveals an issue with the contract awarding processes of many companies. While the wording slightly varies, it typically starts with “We previously hired a development team that could not deliver….”

In the past several months, I’ve noticed a dramatic shift in the ranking of hundreds of companies on most search engines. Unfortunately, consequentially, I’ve also suffered temporary hearing impairment as a result of business owners’ alarm bells going off at decibel levels not previously witnessed to date. Why is that?

Quite simply, the Internet has become a critical medium for the generation of revenue for many companies. Many of these companies rely heavily on the revenues generated from their organic traffic, or unpaid search results. The result of losing even a few positions in rank, often times is the difference between a business that is thriving and a business that is bleeding. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to shift the tide, and the difference between a few placements could easily result in the loss of 70-90% of a companies’ targeted traffic. Think about how you use a search engine. Most individuals open the first 3-5 links that catch their eye and within a minute they’ve narrowed down their potential customer list to 2 or 3 options at most. If your website is not one of the links that catches their eye, then you don’t even have a chance to make a sale…. zero percent!!! That’s horrible odds!

While a website is vital to the long term success of any business, it’s not of much use if it’s not generating targeted traffic and converting valuable leads into customers.

Why can small businesses no longer just get by with a website? A website on its own won’t create customers, it needs to attract visitors! Furthermore, these visitors must be potential customers. If you own a comedy club in Ottawa, and the majority of your traffic is from the US, you can be certain that it’s not generating you additional customers. Even worse, if it’s not generating traffic at all then it serves no purpose whatsoever.

Ottawa, ON, Aug. 21, 2012 – Deep beneath the streets of Canada’s capital lives a superhero who catapults brands into the Internet and saves businesses from the perils of poor social media marketing. His name is N-VisionIT Interactive CEO Brent Mondoux. His superpower? A top-secret strategy known to agents as SM2 – social media superhero methodology.

Mondoux invented the revolutionary SM2 so businesses could arm themselves with a new weapon in the fight to increase website traffic and sales. SM2 helps businesses build loyal, authentic communities using long-term, customized social media strategies.

“It’s not just how to use social media. It’s how to use it well, today and over time, as your business changes and as technology evolves,” said Mondoux, whose company has created websites, mobile applications and social media strategies for clients around the world, including government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.

Each and every day I’m blessed with the opportunity to talk to dozens of leaders in various industries that span the globe.

One of the most common confessions that business owners have shared with me is that they are unable to keep up with the breathtaking pace of technology while keeping abreast of their own respective industries as they evolve.

The second most common confession is the one that troubles me the most. Business owners have become so overwhelmed with technology that they are literally convincing themselves why they don’t need to adapt.

Some common statements heard in the last week alone include “My customers aren’t on mobile”, “Social media is a fad”, “News companies will cease to exist”.

Today I’m going to cover a topic that small business owners ask me almost on a daily basis. If you’ve done a quick search online, you’ll quickly discover that opinions are all over the map, ranging from celebratory at one end of the spectrum all the way to demonization at the other end.

So then, what’s the truth? Well, to add to the confusion, they both are! Running a daily coupon shouldn’t be a split second decision and you need to understand both the pros and the cons of making this commitment. Yes, you heard that right. Running a coupon is a commitment… it’s a commitment to your company, your employees and your customers in a huge way.

A few months ago, barely anyone even heard about Pinterest. Today, however, a very different picture has been painted. With a staggering growth of 261.6% in the last 3 months, Pinterest has been taking the social media nation by storm!

Having already reached 2.2 million daily active users and gaining the coveted rank of being the 59th most visited website in the world (16th most visited in the US), there are already rumors of Pinterest being considered as an acquisition target of social media industry leaders, Facebook and Twitter. Think the growth is about to wane? Actually, it’s the opposite… now that the site is getting to be known, it’s growth is about to explode at an exponential rate that hasn’t yet been witnessed to date!

It’s been 2012 for a little over a month and a half now and I already feel that I’ve accomplished so much more than in the entirety of 2011.

Every January instead of a making a New Year’s resolution, I opt to do something a little more useful with my time, a process which can make not just one positive change in my life, but potentially many. I recap all of my accomplishments from the previous year. This includes reviewing each week’s summary on my “to do list” and highlighting my most significant successes that were accomplished and then highlighting the most significant tasks that still were incomplete.

In doing so I noticed that I had put a lot of my priorities on hold because I was starting too many new projects and so I’ve made a commitment now to simply finish what I start. This forces me to prioritize the options in which I choose to invest my time in and has already made a significant positive impact on my productivity. How so?